Tag: defensiveness

When you get challenged by another person, your instinctual preliminary reactive response is to select from your choices of fight or flight. When you are triggered in social interaction, punching someone in the face, or running out of the room would be far too dramatic for anyone who might like to retain some sense of dignity in modern-day society.

Instead, we replace “fight” with self-defense and “flight” with withdrawal. We either post-up to do battle with words, voice inflection, body stance, and physical gestures, or we become more increasingly silent until we have nothing to say and look for more comfortable environmental circumstances elsewhere.

Of course, this is a spectrum and includes many options between these two extremes.

If someone challenges your competency in an area where you’re feeling you are confident about your abilities, you get an adrenaline charge which triggers your response system, which is primarily operated by your ego.

There is a lot of discussion about the ego, some believe we should have none of it, and others believe we would die without it (at this time I am among the latter) and anything possible between those two extremes. I believe the ego is vitally necessary but should be moderated by a heart-centered individual.

You are the result of a lifetime of experience and learning and far from the equivalent of any other being on this planet. While you may be able to get to know someone intimately and have so much in common with this person, you can never know the totality of what goes on behind the scenes.

Just like you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that no matter how well someone knows you, they cannot know what you are thinking when you are thinking, in the same way, you can never know what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Exponentially beyond this real-time unknowingness, you cannot know what anyone has experienced or learned from their life to this point in time.

When someone challenges you, it is a perfectly normal response to defend yourself, which may include a counter-attack. Obviously, “You don’t know me,” is a reasonable response which will always be true, but accusing whoever has challenged you, feels so much better, as your ego settles into a relentless position of exerting superiority over your challenger.

While you are feeling superior, you’ve now challenged the person who may not have challenged you with any malice whatsoever, as most people challenge motivated by love, compassion, or a sense of caring which is trying to help you live a better life by lending you some of his or her experience or learning. When you counter-attack, you call upon their ego to defend him or her. Now, you are responsible for having triggered an argument or debate, which is far from productive and rarely leads to a positive outcome.

When you and whomever you have engaged in this interaction with are engulfed in this vibratory mismatch, communication is not possible for you are communicating on different frequencies.

You carry with you an enormous cache of hundreds, if not thousands, of sensitivities which have been secretly stored in your subconscious, and are protected by triggers switched on as emergency responses by your ego as a method of self-preservation.

This is the natural state of your human response system. For those who are in the process of awakening, they are in a process of digging up these raw materials which are hidden from the consciousness and dealt with and resolved in a loving matter. Thereby eliminating the emotional trigger from the hidden past life event.

If you can find the wherewithal to love and accept yourself for who you are, you are less likely to become triggered by someone else’s challenge, and it will feel less like a personal attack.

You realize that in most cases this challenge is not an attack, it is only a reflection of that person’s life experience, learning, and self-confidence (at any level) expressing itself. So, it really is more about them asserting themselves, for whatever reason, than it has to do with you at all.

When this happens to you, you can love them, not judge them because you know they are only doing the best they can with what they have, thank them for their input, and compassionately bless them.

Who are you when the heat is on? When you feel like you’re at your wit’s end and you just can’t take one more step, where do you go? What do you do in that moment when who you are is all you have left? Who are you under pressure?

The best of us finds a way to put themselves in the zone, in the now, centering their conscious and gathering their strength to rise above the panic of the situation at hand and carefully, calmly, and methodically take the steps necessary to move through the most difficult or challenging circumstances.

For the rest of us, it seems impossible to fathom that we might be able to possess the ability to summon such resolve in the heat of the moment. How could you hope to call forth such superhuman ability?

Unless you are born with the natural ability to have an unshakable resolve and an iron will, you are a mere mortal and the skill is one that can be learned if you’re so inclined.

Masters of resolve discover a way to find a sacred space within. In this space, you are one with everything, in perfect harmony with life, and you know that anything you face, any situation or circumstance is utterly divine, possibly unpleasant, but necessary for achieving your highest and best.

Being able to place your holistic self (mind, body, and soul) into “the now” separating yourself from the demons of the past and the specters of the future help attune you to the present moment, enabling you to focus on the intricate details at hand.

If you’ve self-centered, have a clear mind and approach this with your own divinity intact, you can rely on your higher guidance system knowing you will do what is right for you. There will be no need for you to justify your words or actions because when you do the right thing for you, guided by your higher self, you automatically do the right thing for those whom you care most deeply for, even if it doesn’t look like it at the time.

Relax, and from a place of peace and harmony, approach this with love and joy, honoring all the players and participants. There are no good guys, no bad guys, only people just like you and me, who are doing the best they can with what they have.

Approach this challenge without contempt, judgment, anger, or malice, as these are representations of varying frequencies of fear which will only introduce more difficulty and pain into the process and fallout from this affair.

When you approach any situation with only love, there can be no fear, and love will prevail.

The next time you face a challenge think about creating or finding a sacred space from which to launch your love approach. Not doing so will have you facing from a place of inadequacy or helplessness, which only leads to anxiety, depression, and fear.

You got this, and you would never be faced with a challenge that you are not pre-equipped to handle.

“I don’t know what it is, but every time this person comes around, I get upset.” If you’re in a relationship, especially a close or intimate relationship with someone that drives you crazy and you just can’t seem to see eye to eye, you’re likely to think this is a toxic person in your life. Is this person toxic or angelic?

If you’re in the stage of personal growth where you need to extricate those people in your life who have a negative effect on your life, then setting boundaries to avoid exposure to others who tend to irritate you is definitely warranted.

But what if some of these people who irritate you are angels or brought into your life to awaken your conscious mind to something which is hidden deep within your self that can be the key to unlocking a brighter future for you releasing the flow for peace, joy, and abundance to envelop your life.

This person could be toxic or angelic

Life can be hard, and we can get accustomed to working very hard to have a better life. While this is effective and generally accepted as a good method of creating a better life for yourself by exercising your brute strength to make a change or evoke something better for yourself, consider there might be a better way.

A better way might be allowing yourself to go with the flow of the life you were destined to live, full of all the best things in life. Believe it or not, this is your natural state.

The moment you were born, you were perfect in every way, and all the best things in life were perfectly attuned to you. Yet, not long after you were born, you were subjected to the social programming of those around you which robbed you of your divine destiny. This continued throughout your life and you became acclimated to life’s struggle for survival. Yet, struggle is not your destiny.

If you look at the body chemistry of those who struggle through life, you can see high levels of Cortisol, the reward for fighting for a better life. For those who allow all the best things in life to come to them, they are rewarded with Dopamine and have very low levels of Cortisol in their bodies.

How you approach life makes a difference

The sooner you can start to change your thinking process, looking for precious learnings or gifts when your emotional triggers are firing, the happier and longer life you will have.

You can apply this approach to those who make you upset. While these people may seem toxic on the surface, they may have been attracted to your life at just the right time, when you were ready to consider talking some deep inner work which may be hindering your personal growth or potential.

This is common in romantic relationships, where we are magically divine mirrors, one to the other, reflecting back those areas of our lives where we can find deep work waiting to be brought to the surface, so they can be dealt with.

Remembering that we all get upset when we are triggered is a normal human condition. No need to berate yourself for feeling this way. It happens to everyone, especially the more we expose our true selves to someone who is close to us. You are not broken or in need of fixing. There is nothing wrong with you.

If you are a highly sensitive person, you will find you are more sensitive to the things people say or do, and even those things that are not said or done, as you rightly (or wrongly) interpret the meanings behind or underneath that which is obvious to the naked eye or attentive ear.

The basic function of triggers is to protect you from potential danger which may or may not be present but projected onto the screen of life. This is rooted in fear, and while this method is instilled in you to protect you, the fear of it all does hinder your progress.

Often, if you are in the process of excluding others from your life who do not make you feel good (though this may be necessary for a time, while you define and get acclimated to who you really are, it is limiting your becoming aware of those things which block you from the best things in life.

The next time someone triggers you, think about it. Ask yourself if there’s any shadow experience of belief hiding inside? There might be something lurking to be exposed and expelled when you feel like you’re getting upset, especially if your reaction seems to be more than the present circumstance requires.

Love is waiting for you.

Your greatest love adventure of all

Your greatest love will require vulnerability, trust, and welcoming all the good things of life, which long to be found in all things, even those which appear to be bad at first glance.

Are you commonly offended or feel disrespected by others? In some, if not most cases, the aggression you feel from someone else isn’t so much an offense as your defense. When you feel like you’ve been emotionally assaulted consider looking within. Is there a possibility that the situation is not an offense so much as it is your defense mechanism overreacting?

The basis of this is a hybrid composite of perception and misinterpretation. Your perception is predisposed, locked and loaded, like a shotgun, ready to protect you from any emotional assault because you’ve been hurt in the past.

That which you look for you will find. If you are loaded for fear, you see potential danger everywhere you look and from this perspective, you are most likely to misinterpret just about anything as a potential assault.

As much as you believe you can understand what a person is really thinking, the truth is you can never know what’s going on inside someone’s head, still you look for the potential threat behind the words which is little more than bad mind reading.

Consider that some people just prefer to state the facts and they are quite adept at doing so without anticipating how it might be interpreted by another person to whom the direct response is directed (or overheard by a third-party who doesn’t fully understand the complete framework of the soundbite).

This includes the “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay”* folks who believe that “yes” and “no” are complete sentences. By not mincing words and just stating the bare statements, assertions, and/or facts, it engenders misinterpretation to fill in the gaps of unspoken words fueled by unintended abruptness.

Then there is also Mr. Or Mrs. Nicely-nice. He or she will do anything to tiptoe around the subject or matter at hand to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings or conflict. These people do not realize that by beating around the bush their attempt to communicate can be interpreted as having something to hide or potentially a hidden agenda, which secretly cancels out their attempts at being perceived as “nice.”

For those who are socially inept, their method(s) of communication can seem rude or abrupt, making you feel as though they are being rude or mean when they are just awkward in their ability to communicate succinctly. They have no idea that their communication is being interpreted negatively, and can’t imagine why someone would not take their words at face value.

If you were to be honest with yourself, you might consider that even you tend to say things in a manner which makes sense to you in all its brevity without considering how it might be received by a listener who does not possess the full understanding of your breadth of knowledge which resides in the knowledge safely locked away inside your mind, yet undisclosed in your statement. You just assume that your audience understands what you’re saying, when nothing could be further from the truth.

When we don’t fully understand what someone is trying to communicate, we tend to fill in the blank spaces with information from our own lives.

If you are in a defensive position, you tend to fill in the blanks with hidden agendas, threats of violence, or other types of potential emotional abuse.

Be open to the idea that people are just people, and for the most part, they are not “out to get you.”

I’m not saying not to be aware, but do not look for demons everywhere, for if you do you can find them anywhere, even if it is not so.

Ever wonder why someone who could be perfectly nice, even-tempered, supportive, polite and friendly can suddenly turn into a hot mess of dysfunction, discontent, hateful, or downright mean? Before you start jumping to conclusions about Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), or Bipolar Disorder, consider this person may be practicing a form of self-preservation, a sort of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde safety net, or precautionary forcefield.

People will do the darndest things to protect themselves when they feel threatened or are triggered, and it’s nearly impossible to know what’s going on inside someone’s head. People carry with them a lifetime of experiences, some of which can be quite frightening or painful, and the human psyches will do just about anything to avoid the risk of suffering due to the reinjury of an unhealed emotional wound.

This is a very base survival instinct at work, which if viewed without judgment, would be impossible not to empathetically understand from a compassionate point of view, rather than picking up stones to hurl them, retaliate, punish, or stomp out someone who is simply trying to make it through life in the best way that they possibly can.

To you, looking at the surface condition, you might witness someone with whom you’ve had a particularly peaceful and close relationship, suddenly experience a dramatic change in character, and might become quite abrasive, mean, and/or nasty. Naturally, you recoil because you’ve been surprised by the sudden change in character, but wait, and consider what might be going on behind the scenes before you accuse or defend yourself.

We all have different skill sets and respond to threats differently based on our experience. Some people who have suffered trauma, abuse, have low self-esteem, or have not learned high performance coping skills may have fewer tools available to them to reach for when they are triggered and may act out inappropriately to isolate themselves from a perceived threat… and they may not be very nice about it. You might even think they are being rude or mean.

Some people with low self-esteem will strike out at well-intended friends, or people who are getting close to them, as a way to protect themselves from being hurt. They have a sense of safety and security in being isolated and threatened by being too close to someone, or vulnerable. For them, it is better to be safe, by pushing people away, than sorry (potentially exposing themselves to potential pain).

Others try to manufacture a safe environment around themselves wherein they can safely navigate their lives by maintaining a high degree of control. They have strict guidelines that participants in their life can safely move about within. Step outside the boundaries they have set and expect to be ejected. Depending on the skills they have accumulated at the time, your expulsion may be unglamorous and hurtful. Nonetheless, this person is doing the best they can to preserve their sanity while maneuvering his or her way through life.

Fear is the predominant motivator of these incongruent outbursts. If you are afraid of losing your life, you are likely to act in ways that are not normal for you in an effort to prolong life. The same is true for some people who are afraid to lose their reputation, love, connections, finances, sanity, safety, or security.

Such a person might strike out at you when they are feeling vulnerable or threatened by name-calling, devaluing you, raising their voice, threatening, or right-out total rejection of you. They may try to blame you for anything they might be feeling, falsely accuse you, or even use their influence to discredit or demonize you.

Such a person will feel better not having you amidst his or her presence and not feel much guilt for getting you out of their life, either momentarily, or permanently. To soothe themselves, they will often huddle people around themselves, polarizing them against you, to justify and make sense of their outburst.

Again, do not take it personally. This person is in pain, and they are doing the best they can with what they have, even if they appear to be acting out in a Mr. Hyde fit of rage. Just because they are acting mean doesn’t mean they are a bad person.

Have compassion and empathy for such a person who is trying to make it through this life carrying such heavy weight of burden from their past, anguish, and pain.

May God bless them, and hopefully, they find better ways to live a better life. If not, they are not wrong or broken for doing the best they can with what they have. They are perfect, and we love them just the way they are.

Even though we like the welcoming, warm feeling that comes from being surrounded by like-minded people, there is no impetus to try to convert others from one point of view to yours. Certainly, there are people you like or admire whom you would like to have join you on your journey, and maybe they can be great traveling companions, but to try to convert them from where they are to where you are, is unwise, if not possible.

It’s not to say that they couldn’t come around or eventually find their way to a more resonant vibration if that is part of their journey in this life. It is not incumbent upon you to save anyone from anything or to make someone think the way you do.

I like having many different kinds of people joining me on my journey while trying to be mindful and not judge people for being who they are. At first blush, this might look like a politically correct “celebrating diversity,” but it’s much more than that. It’s not looking at the diversity (diversity is a form of judgment), it’s allowing anyone, everyone, to simply be. To be who they are, where they are, to come and go as they please.

Just because someone else might share a particular resonance with you today, does not imply they we resonate with you tomorrow. We are all on our own journeys, our paths cross from time to time, to stay in one place too long leads to complacency and stagnation. You must keep moving if you want to continue to grow, change, and evolve into the best version of yourself, and allow others to do the same.

If you disagree with someone’s point of view, to criticize them for their belief is an act of violence. To impose your belief on someone else suggests you are supporting yourself with a sense of superiority, in essence looking down on someone else for not being as enlightened as you. You might even insinuate or call them a fool, as you sit on your self-endowed high throne of superiority.

Only a fool would say,Only a fool would say that.

On your own road of enlightenment, you may be able to recall concepts which you held close to your heart, things that you believed so much and held so dearly, that you would defend them with everything you’ve got, even possibly give your life in defense of it, only to find out later, that belief no longer serves you. How could you not bless someone else for being on a similar journey on their own path to enlightenment?

No two journeys are the same. Even amongst the like-minded people you share experiences with, none of them followed the same path you followed to get to this point in time. Some may have had similar journeys but no two are the same, even if you’ve traveled hand-in-hand along the way.

To judge someone else for their beliefs is to disrespect their journey, and doing so explicitly demonstrates your lack of tolerance. For as much as you feel more awake or enlightened than someone else, to devalue another for where they are on their path is preventing your expansion, tethering you to your barbarian roots.

Pick Your Perspective

Fear or Love

Judgment or Tolerance

Tolerance is the polar opposite of judgment. Judgment is rooted in fear, tolerance is powered by love.

When you meet someone who believes something differently than you do, bless them, try to see their belief from their perspective, love and accept them for who they are, where they are, and celebrate their life, without the imposition of your beliefs.

This is not to say that you cannot share your perspective, certainly, you may, but do so with love and compassion, only to leave clues for someone to ponder along their journey.

To debate, to try to convince or convert someone is barbarism. Aren’t you ready to cut the cord that binds you to those archaic thought forms and leave them behind?

What if you’re on the receiving end?

How do you feel when someone tries to convince you that you are wrong and that you must change your mind or life to align with his or hers? No doubt, you can feel the barbarianism behind that approach when you are on the receiving end.

Your first response to being attacked by someone is

Fight or Flight

You could turn and run, or post up, defend your position and prepare to engage in a battle of wits, or you could choose to

Love

When you choose to love someone who is assaulting you, you try to see things from their point of view. Encourage them to share their thoughts and feelings, expressing explicitly their point of view, and blessing them for where they are on their journey with compassion, not condemnation.

If you are safe and secure in what you believe, you have no need to defend it. You are impenetrable. If you harbor doubt and fear about what you believe, you are more apt to take a defensive stance, because there’s a part of you (that higher part of you) that is incongruent with your belief, so the ego takes over and prepares to battle in an effort to impose congruency by brute force.

Seeing different people as different, through the eyes of fear, building walls and separating them leads to chaos. You know that. Take a look around… You see it every day.

Seeing people as harmonious, through the eyes of love, allows you to see the perfection in everyone and everything. From this vantage point, you can see everything is connected and perfect.

Life is like a war zone. Everyone is fighting for their lives, for their survival, for their preservation of their self. It’s a constant war of me-versus-you. In some cases we create teams or troops, then it’s us-versus-them. Even so, it is not uncommon for a barrage of me-versus-you appearing within the troops of the us-versus-them. We are surrounded by the war we wage for our self.

Are we all so narcissistic to think that we are so superior to any other person, that any incongruence that we interpret or sense justifies suiting up and weaponizing anything available to us in the immediacy of that moment when our self feel threatened, disregarded or disrespected.

We strike out, strike back in a full on devil may care battle to defend our self, to annihilate the enemy taking no prisoners.

If you don’t see this taking place in your life, you certainly can see it in others. In fact, you may be keenly aware of others posting up to defend their selves and striking out at others, even labeling and pointing out their behavior to others, but unable to see your own participation in the battle. Maybe, it’s out of denial – or an all-out attempt to refuse to see these attributes within – or, you might be using a different set of weapons, hiding behind the shield of the victim.

In most cases, reviewing the base causes initiating the fear of loss and defense of self is based on something that isn’t even real. Some emotionally charged belief in something that cannot be seen, verified or vilified, because it is a feeling. A feeling that created a trigger marking the emergent defense measures being launched, because anything else would mean certain death to what you believe to be true.

Yet, we know that what we believe to be truth changes as we mature or gain access to new information. This has never been more apparent than in these current days of rapidly advancing technology when we actually have been able to witness – with our own eyes – the impossible being an ordinary aspect of everyday life.

Regardless, we see everything in the world all around us as a potential threat as we continue to be keyed-up and on high alert to any prospective assault. And the higher law rewards us by honoring our seeking by giving us the gift of bestowing upon us that which we seek. Universal laws do not change, so this is true: Seek and you will find. (This law sometimes confounds scientific research.)

If you look for demons, you will surely find them. When you discover them, you can initiate the holy war you rage to protect your self, yet again.

If you’re open, and honest, you might find yourself looking inside and asking if all this pain and war is necessary. Why? Because something inside you is yearning for an alternate emotional state, one of peace, serenity, joy and happiness.

When you are in a constant state of combat, there is little space available for experiencing the good things in life with any degree of gratitude or enjoyment. When you are in a high security mindset scanning for potential threats, you find it difficult to find the space for gratitude and allowing yourself to live a better life.
This is true: You are waging a war, when no war exists, that vanishes when you stop fighting it.

It’s your choice. You can choose to love, instead of fight.

It’s not easy, because you’ve spent your whole life being the warrior.

Your love life, your life filled with love and enjoying and cherishing all the good things this life has to offer, is tapping you on the shoulder, even now.

Isn’t now the time to consider putting down your weapons, turning your back on the war, surrounding your self with love and gratitude?

When you see that person who is calm, in a state of zen, and nothing seems to bother them, you think, “What the hell is wrong with that person?”

What you might find, is that they have mastered the idea that nothing is personal. They don’t seem to get uptight (much) and stuff just seems to roll off their back, as they don’t get overanxious or take things personally. They embrace the idea that things are as they are and that’s okay.

You, too, could begin living a life free from the angst of others, because, after all, people will disagree with you, even scheme to trip you up, or try to make you look as if you’re overreacting in front of peers or coworkers, just to prove they can.

Rather than react, you could opt to stop taking things personally and take away their superpower in an instant.

First of all, make a list of the things that piss you off (you know the people that piss you off have this list, shouldn’t you?). Next, review the list. What do yo find? Look for the key components that bother you (this can be an exciting journey in self-discovery, as you find the things that irk you the most often are related to key life moments in your past – or early childhood – torturing you in the present).

Try to look at the issue from other perspectives and think about how a particular thing or topic that carries with it a powerful negative charge and ask, “Does it really matter?” In the scope of the life and times of the human race, many a mountain has been made of molehills, just to cause division between peoples, when in reality, very little is truly meaningful. And when you think of it, nothing has meaning, except for the meaning that you give it.

Take a look at celebrities, politicians and other public figures that take massive stands, expecting others to conform to their point of view. How is that working for them?

I discovered long ago, you are more likely to get someone to see from your perspective if you love and accept them just they way they are without expectation, rather than entering into a heated debate or brow-beating them.

If community or global issues get you riled up, realize whatever it is, is not happening to your, personally. Position yourself as a supporter instead of a protester. Protesters (those who expend a great deal of energy in opposition to something) actually add more energy to the thing they are standing against, strengthening the very thing they don’t want. On the other hand, supporters put their energies toward what they do want (the solution) thereby increasing its effectiveness.

Remember that life is what it is. It takes all kinds of people to make the world go ’round, and start making room in your psyches to allow others to be as they are. Take the position of the observer rather than the enforcer. It’s not your job to control others, so try to find opportunities to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

As you are growing into a more tolerant lifestyle, embracing who you are without having to have anyone conform to your personal standards, you may begin to see others doing the same thing. Finding opportunities to spend time in their proximity will make your allowance grow even more.

Does that mean life will be rosy? No, not really. You can wear all the rose-colored glasses you want, and still, people you trusted will fall short of the mark, those you love will hurt your feelings, and you will do likewise (either intentionally, or not). This is a fact of life. Do your best to realize that it is what it is, any tr not to judge others (or yourself) too harshly when it becomes apparent.

How can you disarm those who would like to attack you, or put you down?

Easy, don’t give them any ammunition. When you practice tolerance, there is no opposition. When you can wrap your head around that everything and everyone is perfectly fine just the way they are and no one is right or wrong, allowing for differing opinions, what is there to fight against? Nothing.

And what about your idea of truth? Do you find yourself being defensive, fighting for what you believe? Well, just sit back and think about it… Where did you get this idea of truth? Did someone plant the idea, or did it originate from within your own mind, with your own reasoning and rationale? Then review all the things you strongly believed in… Has your belief changed over time? In most cases, truth and what we believe does change over time, as new information becomes available. It’s inevitable. Things change. So cut yourself some slack and admit to yourself, “This is what I believe to be true at this moment in time.” Based on the information at hand. Who knows what you might believe tomorrow.

Have good intentions and hold yourself to the standard of the Hippocratic Oath, “to do no harm.”

Stop adding energy to the bad things that are brought to your attention. If you see something bad in the media, switch it off, change the channel, refuse to engage in it. Just the welling up of negative emotion within you makes those things that you dislike more powerful. Avoid all negativity.

When people are acting poorly, it is not up to you to try to change them, punish them, or make them feel bad. Do not talk about them behind their back or try to ridicule them for their actions, confront them or offer them advice.

If you find yourself in close proximity and a confrontation is unavoidable, try to speak your peace with lighthearted humor, remembering that it’s not about you. When someone is in opposition of you and you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, keep in mind that this person is acting out because of their own inner demons. It has nothing to do with you. In fact, it can be somewhat of a blessing that you were chosen to participate, because the more tolerant, new you, is less likely to fight and more likely to understand and have empathy for the person who is acting out. Try to put yourself in their shoes.

If you don’t like haters, don’t be one. How hard is that? Only share positive support and do not put others down, not for anything. After all, aren’t we all just doing the best we can with what we have?

If yo have an opinion or want to share some factual data, please do so, but share your information humbly, without the expectation that anyone should believe you or conform to your thought patterns. Think of it more like planting seeds. Share your information and allow it to take root and grow on its own, or not.

Practice the Golden Rule (Jesus’ sermon on the mount, Matthew 7:12) by treating others as you would like to be treated.

Congratulations, you are on your way to the tolerant new you, who doesn’t take things personally, because it’s not. Everything and everyone just is as it is, and that’s okay.